Want
to manipulate people to do things for you? First, ask them to tie your
shoelaces.

In a series
of new experiments, researcher Dariusz Dolinski of the Warsaw School
of Social Sciences and Humanities in Poland found that when the initial
request was highly unusual, people were more likely to comply with the
demand that followed it.

Dolinski had a confederate stop people en route to a supermarket
and say to them, "Excuse me, but I suffer from terrible back pain
and I cannot bend down. My shoelaces are undone. Could you please be
so kind as to tie them for me?"

That was the unusual request. Other passersby were given a routine
marketing survey.

A little later, the passersby were stopped by a woman standing
outside the supermarket.

Dolinski wrote: "The second request was posed at the entrance
to the supermarket by a woman who asked the participants to 'keep an
eye' on her shopping cart full of goods 'for a moment.' She explained
that her husband had her car keys and he had disappeared somewhere in
the supermarket, and as the cart had a broken wheel, it was very hard
to push. She would like to look for her husband without having to push
the cart."

Dolinski found that people were more likely to mind the woman's
grocery cart when they had been previously asked to fulfill an unusual
request — to tie someone else's shoelaces.